Mark Jenkinson: It is an honour and a privilege to be addressing you from these green Benches, Mr Deputy Speaker, and most unexpected for a Wukkington lad like me. It would be fair to say that neither the timing nor circumstance of my maiden speech are as I imagined, with my original timing altered by the loss of one of Workington’s great artists—a much-loved former teacher and my wife’s grandmother—followed by lockdown, and the circumstance altered by a socially distanced Chamber and our new normal in the light of coronavirus.
On that subject, I must pay tribute to the huge sacrifices that each and every one of my constituents has made to stop the spread of the virus and to the huge effort from many individuals and businesses with their contributions to local community and national efforts. If I was to look for one positive in recent months, it would be the way that so many of my constituents have stood up to the plate to support those around them.
The scale and speed of the Government’s response to coronavirus has been unprecedented. The measures that we have seen across the grant schemes, rate relief schemes, furlough schemes and bounce-back loans have been welcomed by my constituents in Workington. There is more to do and there are lessons to be learned, but I  am incredibly proud to be here today to support the Government in their efforts.
I stand here before a House that has never before so closely resembled the make-up of the country, particularly on the Conservative side, as so many of us now speak for industrial communities that Labour deserted. As the son of a binman and an office clerk, and as a former British Steel apprentice without a university education, I am testament to that change. While I never thought, growing up, that I might grace these green Benches, others seemed to. One of my secondary school science teachers, Mr Harris, once recognised in my school report—if the Prime Minister is listening—my ministerial potential. He suggested agriculture, but I am not fussy.
Not having spent a huge amount of time outside Cumbria, I wondered how I might identify fellow Cumbrians in the big city. Folklore has it that I should greet those about whom I have a suspicion they may be Cumbrian in my native dialect with, “’as thou e’er sin cuddy lowp a five barred yat?”, in the hope of eliciting the answer, “Aye, it mun a bin a gay lish cuddy else a varra la’al yat.” At the risk of destroying the ancient practice of identifying Cumbrians in exile, for those not lucky enough to hail from God’s own county of Cumbria, that is dialect for, “Have you ever seen a donkey jumped a five barred gate?”, and the response, “Yes, it must have been a very fit donkey or a very small gate.” Alongside the promises I made to my constituents for infrastructure improvements, increases in school spending, nurses and police, and levelling up, which this Bill starts to deliver and are very much welcomed across Workington, I will take any attempt that I can to have Hansard record Cumbrian dialect for posterity!
It is customary on these occasions to talk about one’s predecessor, and I take the opportunity to thank Sue Hayman for the work that she has done in this House and across the constituency. She was, and remains, an assiduous proponent of her causes, which I understand she may have the chance to continue from the other place. I wish her well and look forward to working with her to enhance the lives of my constituents.
However, I also wish to talk about another predecessor, John Christian Curwen, the Whig MP for Carlisle—a long time before my hon. Friend representing that seat now—before he went on to win the Cumberland seat in 1826. Under Curwen, Workington was the birthplace of modern agricultural practices at his model farm. Schoose Farm is still farmed to this day. He also introduced the first recorded social insurance scheme locally, and attempted to do so nationally as an MP, nearly 100 years before Lloyd-George put forward the scheme we now know as national insurance. If I can make a fraction of the impact that Curwen made on my constituency, we would be in a good place. But he was not, by his own confession, what is called “a good party man” He was one of those opinionated stalwarts whose independence found readiest expression in alignment with the Opposition. Having watched the drama in this place over the last few years from the outside, I hope for the sake of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) that that is one of his traits I leave in the past.
It was the home of John Christian Curwen, whose picture hangs in the corridor close to your office, Mr Deputy Speaker, that brought me into politics. The destruction and subsequent decay of Workington Hall allowed over decades remains a blight on Workington. I hope to use some of my time here to bring life to what remains, which is grade I listed and partly an ancient scheduled monument.
But the town of Workington is just one of five towns in my constituency, the others being Cockermouth, a wonderful market town filled with independent traders, who have truly shown their resilience in recent years; Maryport, whose residents have accepted me so warmly into my constituency office there, and which sits on the cusp of revival thanks to this Government’s Future High Streets investment; Aspatria, where I continue to work hard to protect people’s future in the face of the proposed closure of the Sealy bed factory; and Silloth, a gem of a Victorian seaside resort that I can recommend to any hon. Members of this House.
The Workington constituency has 30 miles of coastline stretching from industrial towns to the rural villages at the end of Hadrian’s Wall. There are a number of Members of this House, and of the other place, who saw much of the constituency last year during the campaign, in all weathers. I fondly recall a video recorded by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) in the wind and rain in Westfield, as no one could hear a word coming from the mouth of a man who looked like he had been dragged from the sea. I give thanks to all the Members of this House and of the other place, to the many other friends, and to my wife and my family for the support they gave to me on my journey to this place, and continue to give me as I settle into these green Benches.
West Cumbria has led the way in many sectors over many centuries, not only with Curwen. Little Clifton gave us John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson, a protagonist of the industrial revolution who made his mark in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan). Later, Henry Bessemer chose Workington to base his company, and we went on to send the finest steel around the world. Our rail and track products still underpin many a thriving economy.
Cockermouth gave us renowned astronomer Fearon Fallows, while next door in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), Eaglesfield gave us John Dalton, a pioneer of atomic theory, and Keswick’s Dr William Brownrigg discovered platinum. Borrowdale gave us graphite, and Lillyhall in my constituency became a manufacturing centre for graphite in the nuclear supply chain, and, of course, the world-beating pencils produced there today, having had a previous long history in Keswick. Today, we have various companies across the Workington constituency that produce some of the finest packaging materials  in the world, used by every one of us in some way, every day.
The Workington constituency is home to some of the most beautiful places on earth and has a great tourism future ahead of it, but we are also proud of our industrial heritage and our world-beating manufacturing processes in use today. With our friends next door in Copeland, we are the home of the UK’s nuclear expertise. We stand ready to play our part in the delivery of new nuclear and in exporting that expertise around the world. The Workington constituency also has so much more to offer. With some of the highest tidal ranges in the UK—as we talk in this place of new tidal and wave energies—as the maintenance base for the Robin Rigg offshore wind farm and with the constituency set to benefit from the construction of an English-side extension, we also stand ready to play our part in truly becoming Britain’s energy coast.
Workington was a cornerstone of the industrial revolution. As we look to our future, I am sure that the Workington constituency will be at the core of the low-carbon energy revolution to come, and I am delighted to be able to be here to play my part.